Night of the Virtual Dead: Emilia and Ume (Part 1)

Emilia’s heart is racing from the initial shock of coming into this virtual world. The stage curtains behind her now look mangy, covered in stains and insects; she takes a weary step away and shrinks towards the ledge leading to the auditorium floor.

“Emi-chan watch where you’re going!” Ume cautions.

The pitch of her tone does enough to snap Emilia from her daze, she plants her feet and turns around.

“Oh…”

She lets out a muted shriek.

More so than nearly falling off the five foot high ledge of the stage, the sight in front of her is what triggers her instinct to back away. Sitting in each of the hundreds of chairs are moving corpses, with grotesque colored skin and mangled bodies, they seem to writhe. The cacophony of gentle moans and abrasive hissing noises enter her ears as a series of threats.

The auditorium is filled with zombies.

“...I strongly dislike that.” she says, her eyes landing on Ume, who’s VR avatar’s form is wearing an entire military kit with armor and a helmet.

“Uwaa yeah! It’s like resident evil up in here, I’m getting flashbacks of my many childhood playstation adventures!”

“Someone should give your parents a stern talking to.”

Ume waves her hand in front of a zombie, and is perturbed to find the dangling eyes of the corpse glaring at the stage and ignoring her completely. Knowing full well it’s just an NPC, she points her VR automatic rifle at its head and pulls the trigger.

RATATATATAT!!!

The subsequent series of gunshots come in particularly loud through the headphones and it temporarily keeps them distracted from the fact that the zombie didn’t even budge, the bullets didn’t hit their target at all.

“Why did you do that?”

“Hehe, I wanted to see what would happen. But it looks like the zombies aren’t activated yet, I guess this isn’t going to be a mindless shooter after all. I wonder what Tani is trying to have us do in this game?”

Ume looks to Emilia, and sees that her avatar bears a striking resemblance to a certain princess from a very popular video game series involving a plumber. Emilia’s pink dress shines like a beacon of light within a cavernous hole, the crown on her head is even glistening, creating a halo effect around her.

Next to princess Emilia is a pop up moniker that reads.

[_HP : 100

Phoenix Down: 2

Inflection Mana : 10

Gesture Mana : 10_]

“Ohhh Emi-chan Emi-chan, we have HP bars!!”

Emilia can see the numbers in the moniker by her side, and can also see Ume’s.

Ume’s reads,

[_HP: 500

Bullets : 100

Grenades : 1

Knife: 1

Pronunciation Mana : 0

Calm Repetition Mana : 0

Remembrance Mana : 0_]

Emilia is trying to make sense of it, but has no idea what it could mean. She looks at Ume and shakes her head.

“Looks like I have a bunch of health, and you have some magic and a couple revival potions in case we die.”

“In case we die?”

“Well yeah, we’re gonna end up being attacked by these zombies at some point.”

“That sounds horrible.”

“Fear not, Princess Emi-chan.” Ume throws her rifle over her shoulder and strikes a pose straight out of an anime. “I’m here to protect you.”

Emilia has no idea how to respond to that, she remains deathly silent.

Ume receives her silence in the form of a ticklish wave of self awareness. Now in her comfort zone inside a video game, she allowed a portion of her inner chuunibyou to escape her high school aged grasp.

Realizing her folly and hiding her embarrassment within her armor, she shuffles her feet and says, “A-Anyways, the instruction link for the game just popped up! L-Let’s hear what it's got to say…”

[There are precisely 200 zombies here, programmed to attack you in progressing speeds. Similar to Tetris, every ten zombies will move faster than the last.]

The recorded voice coming through the speakers without a doubt belongs to Tani, but the pitch of the narrator's voice is set in a deeper tone to sound more menacing.

“But I only have a hundred bullets…”

[By now I’m sure you’re asking yourself how you're supposed to kill 200 zombies with 100 bullets. The answer is, you can’t. Underneath your HP bar you’ll see that both of you have Mana involving different categories of speech patterns. This Mana is the only way to win the game.]

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

[Shut up and let me tell you.]

“Wait a second, isn’t this narration a recording??”

Even computerized Tani expects to be interrupted.

[Every correct speech pattern will earn you ten Mana points each, which can reach an unlimited number so long as you answer correctly, however, just like the zombies, these questions will come at a faster pace as you progress, and you will have less time to answer before the next question is presented.]

These rules make Emilia nervous, and the thought of the zombies she sees sitting in the chairs rising to their feet to come attack her makes her palms sweaty.

“I hope these questions aren’t hard…” she muses aloud.

[These questions will be hard!] the narrator's voice pointedly informs.

“.....”

[But these questions are reasonable. Here is a sample.]

A bubble pops up in their sight, upon looking at it and using the wand in their hand to click the button, text glides in front of their faces.

{Emilia, if you had just met a friend at the subway station for a Sunday play date, how would you greet them?}

“Ummm…”

All of the sudden, a timer flashes in front of her, counting down from 10.

“....”

She doesn’t answer in time, and the clock hits zero.

Emilia’s HP bar drops 5 points.

Ume waited the full ten seconds in silence for this question to be answered, and squirms in disbelief when it wasn’t.

“Emi-chan, I think you just needed to say hello.”

The next text is a suggestion to retry, which is clicked by Ume. The timer begins to count down once more.

“Umm…”

“C’mon you can do it!”

“...Hello.”

XXXXXXX blanks the screen in red, accompanied by the sound of the buzzer of failure one would hear on a game show after missing out on a chance to win a new car.

Emilia’s HP drops another 5 points.

“But… I answered correctly.”

[Emilia, your job is to answer the questions correctly with inflection, true to an actual human being. Your Mana points will increase depending on how well you answer these questions, along with hand gestures and body movements that the VR will pick up. Each one is equally as valuable to the other, and both will be needed to survive this game. You will be able to transfer much needed Mana points to Ume’s correct answers, which she can turn into magic attacks to kill the zombies.]

“Ah, cool!” Ume expresses her joy.

Emilia expresses her doubt.

“I’m going to get you killed, Kimura-senpai.”

“Not at all! I can help you through this, I’ll answer the questions first and then you can copy me. Easy peasy.”

“....”

[Ume, your example is next.]

She perks up as the text rolls in front of her.

{Say good morning in Italian.}

The timer counts down from 10.

“I have no clue how to say that!”

“It’s buongiorno.”

“Ehh… bingobango?”

XXXXXXX

Ume’s HP bar drops 60 points.

“That’s so much damage!”

[Basic sayings are the pillars of language learning. You will be pronouncing them under duress, as you are charged with all the killing of the zombies. If you can say them correctly, you will earn the Mana needed to continue attacking after your bullets and handheld weapons are gone. Another way to add Mana is by how calmly you answer, and how well you can remember the answers as the questions repeat themselves quicker towards the end of the game.]

“Oh Emi-chan, my princess, I’m going to get you killed.”

“Are you wanting me to be the positive one now? Cause I can’t.”

“Uwaaah~ you’re supposed to tell me that you can help me with the Italian bits!”

“I mean, I’ll try.”

[The game will commence in 10 seconds! Prepare yourself, my students. You are about to obtain knowledge!]

The two girls look at each other and exchange a nervous glare, they then turn towards the zombies. Each second passes by like an action hero watching the red numbers of a bomb ticking down after he failed to cut the correct wire to diffuse it.  

Ume cocks her gun and slowly backs way towards the stage. Emilia grips the VR wands in her hands extra tight and takes a deep breath. 

The clock reaches zero.